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VICE's Oobah Butler just released his first book, How To Bullsh*t Your Way To Number 1: An Unorthodox Guide To 21st Century Success . We scammed an excerpt from the chapter "Adventures in Being a Bullshitter," which you can read below. I think it’s fair to say you bullshit a lot. Sometimes you don’t know you’re doing it, but you are, constantly. Nobody is above bullshit. If you really want to get down to it, bullshitting is hardwired into the very nature of human psychology—taking that small nub of you that lives inside your head, that you know so well, and projecting it outwards, shooting it onto other people with a cloud of confidence, and thin air, and projection—that’s bullshit. Every time you express the soul of yourself in any way outside of you through your mouth, you’re technically bullshitting a little, just letting people know you’re there by making some noise about it. Don’t be afraid of being a bullshitter. It’s happening all the time. The first time I bull...

Jeopardy! is one of those cultural institutions that has basically been the exact same show forever but, somehow, never slips out of the collective consciousness for long. Whenever it seems teetering on the verge of antiquation, a Ken Jennings type swoops in to get everyone excited about weird, backwards trivia once again . Right now, that person is James Holzhauer, the sports-betting mastermind who's currently laying siege to the Jeopardy! coffers, thanks to a mixture of random knowledge, gambling genius, and some preternatural buzzer skills . It's great that Holzhauer's winning streak got everyone talking about a 55-year-old game show again, but the newfound attention has also brought a disturbing bit of Jeopardy! knowledge to light: Namely, the show won't let its contestants make "69" jokes anymore, Vulture reports . Ken Jennings first revealed the shocking truth on Twitter last week, telling a fan that wagering $69 is "officially forbidden on Jeo...

Roslyn Talusan had just gotten off a red-eye flight from Toronto to Calgary when she logged onto Twitter and saw Ariana Grande’s now-deleted tweets about bloggers. The tweets pissed her off. So she responded with her own incendiary thread. “I was tired of her bullshit and needed to call her out,” Talusan told VICE. “It’s really upsetting when millionaire celebrities punch down on an industry that’s scrambling to survive.” She didn’t expect Grande to DM her—a civil exchange she later screenshotted and posted. While she could’ve anticipated some heat from Grande’s fans in return for her comments, which included describing Grande as a “bitchass,” she was ultimately floored by the level of vitriol she’s now been on the receiving end of for the better part of a week. Racist and misogynist comments, death wishes, threats, and doxxing have all been levied at Talusan by Grande’s fans. “I hope someone murders you! I also hope your kids get murdered too bitch! You deserve it you fucking wh...

Update (4/29): The Woodstock 50 organizers have contested the claim that the festival is canceled, telling the Poughkeepsie Journal that "Woodstock 50 vehemently denies the festival's cancellation and legal remedy will [be] sought." At this time, it's unclear if the show will actually go on. Well, it happened: After a botched ticket roll-out and a brain-bleedingly weird lineup , Woodstock's 50th Anniversary festival has officially been canceled, Billboard reports . Dentsu Aegis Network, the company footing the bill for the festival, announced the news in a statement Monday, saying that "despite our tremendous investment of time, effort and commitment, we don’t believe the production of the festival can be executed as an event worthy of the Woodstock Brand name while also ensuring the health and safety of the artists, partners and attendees." The 50th anniversary festival was originally slated to take place August 16-18 in Watkins Glen, New York,...

Seven bless me. After a looong build-up in the first two episodes of season eight, Game of Thrones's seventieth chapter was almost certainly the most cataclysmic installment of the series to date. We still have a LOT of questions about what exactly went down at the Battle of Winterfell, but that’s a different article . Into the breach once more, my memes. Charge! First off, The Long Night featured some questionable-at-best military strategy, and people took note. Sure, the Dothraki light cavalry might be best served by attacking the dead outside Winterfell, but why wasn’t everyone else behind the stone walls, or at least the fire trench? You guys know every soldier you waste turns into an ice zombie, right? For a guy who learned combat in a paramilitary organization based in a castle next to a giant fucking ice wall , you’d think Jon Snow would know more about defending a medieval fort. But, no, just run around with your sword, that’ll for sure work, dude. ...

When my editor asked me if I would like to write something about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau being on The Simpsons I agreed immediately. While I haven’t watched the show much lately, I can still say it’s my favorite show of all time as I have fond childhood memories of the very best episodes soothing the drug-addled rages of my father. More than that though, I was excited to be part of a grand Canadian tradition: losing our goddamn shit any time our country is mentioned or noticed by American pop culture. We react to American TV noticing us like we ran into our slightly drunk high school crush at a party and we didn’t think she knew our name but then she said she knew our name and we were kind of cute before throwing up on our shoes; it’s all unfortunate giddiness and regrettable excitement. Any time we are mentioned by a late-night host you see headlines blare the next day, “Stephen Colbert did a joke about tuques last night. Our long national nightmare is over!” or “Rest easy Fat...

The Fyre Festival Cheese Sandwich is the iconic image of the influencer age. Those four words alone instantly conjure up a picture of the simultaneously dry-yet-slimy polystyrene picnic: two slices of brown bread, two pale cheese singles and a wedge of tomato barely supporting itself atop a bed of wet lettuce. Two years after the disastrous festival , you can now buy enamel pins, socks and even dog bandanas featuring the snack. Multiple restaurants, bars and pop-ups have sold their own take on the sandwich, with the latest version set to be on sale in Chicago throughout May. Though it was just cheese and bread when it was first served to guests in April of 2017, the Fyre Festival Cheese Sandwich is now much more. It is the emblem of the entire failed festival. Which would be totally and absolutely fine, if more than three pictures of the sandwich existed. In January of 2019, two Fyre Festival documentaries were released near simultaneously. Neither the producers of Hulu's Fyre ...

When the Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi wrote about Goldman Sachs, he said "the first thing you need to know is that it's everywhere, a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money". Which brings us to Marvel Studios – and, by extension, its owner, Disney – whose latest film will soon become the most lucrative ever made. Avengers: Endgame raked in an unheard-of $1 billion in its opening weekend. By the time the dust has settled, Marvel's caped messiahs will occupy five spots in the all-time box office top 10. This is not a surprise. This is what Marvel films do. The real point of interest is how well it's gone down with critics. With near-unanimity, the write-ups register somewhere between grudging enjoyment and gushing acclaim: from broadsheets to tabloids , America to Britain , excitable nerds to indie chin-strokers, the consensus is that Avengers: Endgame really ...

BIG SPOILERS: DON’T READ ANYMORE UNLESS YOU WANT THE ENTIRE SERIES SPOILED After an eight year build-up, with zombies up the ying yang and ice dragons to boot, it’s fairly unsatisfying how the whole “winter is coming” threat was taken down by a quick handed Arya Stark. I mean don’t get me wrong, that’s not to say that “The Long Night ” —which was basically an 82-minute action sequence—was boring. It was a wild beautiful ride. The long tracking shots that shifted from character to character, the ticking clock soundtrack, the (too dark) darkness, dragons, white walkers and fiery set pieces lit up the episode. Miguel Sapochnik directed a final battle with the White Walkers that was appropriately intense, and one that easily put “ Hardhome ” and the “ Battle of the Bastards ” to shame in its size. But when the blood and snow is settled, Jon Snow looks like the world’s worst military general, while Deus Ex Arya killed the final boss in a way that was badass, but made little narrative se...

20th Century Fox We may now live in the weirdest timeline, but the weird isn’t always bad or ominous. Sometimes it’s for the good. Case in point: Back in March, a New Jersey high school randomly mounted a stage version of Alien , the 1979 horror-sci-fi classic that started a deathless franchise. From pictures and accounts that flooded social media, it sure looked incredible. Wish we’d been there! Well, now, as per EW , we can all watch the whole shebang on YouTube. Granted, the version filmed and posted online is an encore performance, from last Friday. But it wasn’t your typical performance: It was done in part for Sigourney Weaver , the movie’s star (and — spoiler? — lone survivor). Previously the actress — who was Oscar-nominated for the film’s first sequel, Aliens — had praised the production mounted by North Bergen High School, as had its director, Ridley Scott. The former (and maybe future) Ripley was so impressed she decided to visit the school to see it, and its creators...

Local Adventurer Six years ago, couple Jacob Fu and Esther JuLee would have told you that they knew Atlanta really well. After all, they’d spent most of their lives in and around the city. But when the duo decided to move to LA in search of adventure, they began to question their previous assumptions. As they explored Los Angeles — excited to uncover its off-the-beaten-path corners and hidden gems — it occured to them that maybe they hadn’t fully appreciated the ATL. Had they been missing out on adventures by sticking to tried and true routines? “We realized how much we took our own city for granted,” Fu says. “You get into your rhythm and rut, and you end up revisiting the exact same places, never bothering to be an adventurer in your own city.” The couple vowed to never fall into this trap again. No matter where they lived, they promised themselves to go on adventures near their home. JuLee started a blog to chronicle the journey called Local Adventurer . It was a hit, and ...